Friday, February 24, 2012

Liberal women want to love Jon Stewart and the Daily Show, but that love is not returned. After Jezebel wrote a post about the difficulties that female staffers encountered working at the Daily Show, feminists were angry at Stewart. Unfortunately, nothing changed at the testosterone fueled Daily Show. Despite producing great work, female correspondents have seen very little air time since that blog post.

Stewart's recent eloquent defense of a woman's right to control their reproductive health has caused some feminists to fall in love with him again. While I thank him for pointing out the obvious about birth control and abortion, I want to ask him why he has so few women guests on the show.

In 2010, the Daily Show had 131 male guests and only 35 female guests. In 2011, it was even worse. 138 men were invited on the show while 32 women appeared. That works out to a ratio of men to women guests of 4.3:1. In fairness, 2012 has been much better. There have been 20 male guests and 9 female guests, but the year is still young.

Feminists should demand that Stewart invite more female guests. Many people get their news from the Daily Show. If they do not see women on the show, they will think that they do not count.